@teledyn@mstdn.ca2025-12-26 04:53:03
May you always crush the skulls. Big ones, little ones, beaky ones, mousey ones, all types, and may you always catch the flying things so you never go hungry.
— cat blessing
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-12-22 13:01:18
Investigation: in 22 US states, Uber approves drivers with many types of convictions, such as violent felonies, that are over seven years old to keep costs low (Emily Steel/New York Times)
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/business/uber-background-chec…
@salrandolph@zirk.us2025-10-23 13:59:00
As I’m writing, the season is “Crickets chirp around the door.” By the time you read it, it will be “First Frost.” In New York, where I live, autumn is taking hold. Darkness in the early morning, leaves and branches coming down in high winds, and in the afternoon, low light floods the avenues, catching the tops of trees.
https://
@NFL@darktundra.xyz2025-10-23 13:37:05
Key fantasy football questions for Week 8: Is Lamar Jackson returning? Is Rome falling? https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6742265/2025/10/23/key-fantasy-football-questions-week-8-lamar-jackson/
@Sustainable2050@mastodon.energy2025-11-22 08:55:08
Oh great. Sales of pesticides containing PFAS 'forever chemicals' growing explosively, as more and more types are allowed on the market.
https://www.nieuweoogst.nl/nieuws/2025/11/12/afzet-gewasbeschermingsmiddelen-met-pf…
@hex@kolektiva.social2025-12-18 19:13:23
The #IWW #GDC as an antifascist organization was always kind of a hack. It was a beautiful hack and it worked well for what it did.
In 2016, as Trump was rising, I found info from the Twin Cities GDC. They were super organized, building an amazing community defense organization. When we (Seattle) went to set up our chapter, following their lead, they were extremely supportive. When I got shot, Twin Cities folks were at my house keeping my partner safe. They literally flew people out to support us. They very much remain in my mind when I think about what mutual aid looks like.
Unionism is an important strategy of a larger fight. But it's important to realize that it's not the other way around. The GDC was built to defend the union, because there wasn't something larger to do that work. It filled a gap.
When we organized against Trump, we tried to make the GDC the greater thing. We tried to make the GDC into the vehicle for social revolution against the fascist threat... And it sort of worked. We were able to do a lot.
But that was never what it was built to do. It was always built as an appendage of the IWW. This contains its own problem. If Unionism is the revolutionary movement, then it becomes impossible to build a truly revolutionary society. Unionism centers "workers" which implicitly decenters those who can't work in the traditional sense (the young, the elderly, those physically or mentally able to work). It also decenters care labor that hasn't yet been widely commodified. Sure, there are all types of hacks to patch the holes, but the fundamental construction starts from the wrong assumptions.
It felt, for a while, like things could go another way. Like that our ability to bring members in could shift things a bit, maybe set the GDC on more equal footing with the core focus of the IWW. But that was always an illusion, far less important to think about than the crushing terror of the regime we were fighting.
Now, I will absolutely trash talk the IWW on occasion but in the end I do think they're doing good and important work. Any criticism I have should be taken with a grain of salt... And I know I do have a lot of salt. Again, Unionism is an important strategy. It's useful both in improving immediate material conditions and as part of the most powerful weapon we have against the capitalist system: the general strike. It's important, I can't say that enough. But it's not sufficient.
I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and I wonder if there are any other GDC organizers or former organizers who might be feeling the same. Feel free to DM me. I'd like to get some more perspectives and see if my understanding from several years ago deviates significantly from what other folks are feeling right now.
I'd also like to bounce some ideas around that come from my own organizing experience.
@pre@boing.world2025-11-22 10:39:50
Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
--
Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin
@cdarwin@c.im2025-10-12 21:39:57
After almost two centuries,
Baker & Taylor,
a nationwide library book distributor,
will reportedly shut down operations in January.
Baker & Taylor CEO Aman Kochar told employees Monday that following a recent failed acquisition deal with ReaderLink, the Charlotte-based company has no viable path forward, though he had hoped to find another solution
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-21 21:40:52
Filing: Satya Nadella's total pay for fiscal 2025 rose nearly 22% YoY from $79.1M to $96.5M, including $84.2M in stock awards; MSFT is up ~23% so far in 2025 (Todd Bishop/GeekWire)
https://www.geekwire.com/2025/satya-nadell
@Techmeme@techhub.social2025-10-21 21:01:38
Filings: Meta spent the most on US lobbying in Q3, spending $5.8M, followed by Amazon, Google, Apple; Anthropic, Nvidia, and a16z hit $1M for the first time (Ashley Gold/Axios)
https://www.axios.com/2025/10/21/tech-lobbying-insights-q3
